LONE ANGLER JOURNAL

Ed Engle’s blog, The Lone Angler Journal, is a different
take on fly fishing from the popular Rocky Mountain author and angler that
occasionally spills over into the joy of just being outside no matter what he’s
doing…

That blue wire rib on the anchor fly in my last post (12/17/2014) wasn’t there just for looks; I used it by design because the color blue seems to attract the trout’s attention during the winter months. This is especially true for tailwaters when the flow is low and clear. I’ve noticed that the blue colored flies don’t necessarily work all the time, but when the trout are on them it can change your day. That’s why I fish them pretty much every time I go to the river this time of year.

Pictured are a couple other “blues” you may want to consider for your winter fishing. I call the pattern on the left Stan’s Blue Midge after its originator Stan Benton. Stan’s actually the fisherman who turned me on to using the color blue. The original Stan’s Blue Midge used a flashy blue Arizona Yarn for the thorax, but that’s not available anymore so I use black dyed beaver. The abdomen is blue Krystal Flash.

The fly on the right comes from my friend Glenn Weisner. Glenn tested the pattern on spring creeks in Ohio, Wisconsin Minnesota, Montana and Pennsylvania and reports it catches trout any time of the year. He went as far as testing the fly with 12 different colored glass beads that were from the same distributor (Mill Hill) and the same size as the Cobalt Blue Glass Seed Bead and found that the fly with Cobalt Blue bead was hands down the most effective. The abdomen on the fly is black thread with UTC extra small silver wire for the rib. The thorax on my example in the photo is black dyed beaver.